How Gran's House came to be........ it took becoming a grandmother to realize what God has called me to....Granny was a common name given to midwifes many years ago....I am not a granny (midwife)- I am a gran (doula)...Gran is what my grandson Tyler calls me.

and my house is who I am.

It is where I raised my children and where my grands will come to visit.It is where I pray and create and isthe place I long for when my day job gets rough.

It is where over 80 years ago my father in law was brought into this world, and where my husband went to visit his gran.

It is where I home schooled my children and canned tomatoes with my mom for the very last time.

My House is a Home and my Home is Me.

Amen!

I'm Christine - wife to Douglas, mom to John (his wife Ivy), James, Joshua and Kathryn (and her husband Bob) and Gramma to Tyler. Babies have always held a special place in my heart. In fact, I knew before I became pregnant with our first child in 1975 that I wanted a home birth. Not too unusual in our family considering that my husband and his sister were both planned home births in the early 50's. The doctor told my father in law to put on a kettle for tea. He'd be right over. And this was in a city with three birthing hospitals. Unfortunately, my home birth wasn't possible due to numerous complications but that didn't stop me from reading, studying and learning in hopes of one day becoming a midwife. But life happens and it wasn't until the announcement of the upcoming birth of my first grandchild in 2008 that I came across what I truly was called to be. A doula - one who serves women.

The woman about to become a mother, or with her newborn infant upon her bosom, should be the object of trembling care and sympathy wherever she bears her tender burden or stretches her aching limbs...God forbid that any member of the profession to which she trusts her life, doubly precious at that eventful period, should hazard it negligently, unadvisedly or selfishly. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.